


catch you on the flip side, sugar lips

by corpsesoldier



Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam 2020 [2]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Discord: The People's Tomb (Locked Tomb Trilogy), F/F, Fluff and Angst, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Dream, dream bubble shenanigans, fluff that rapidly becomes angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26651020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corpsesoldier/pseuds/corpsesoldier
Summary: Maybe if Harrow's brain runs enough scenarios, she'll find a way to keep what she's lost.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Series: The People's Tomb Fic Jam 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962700
Comments: 13
Kudos: 115





	catch you on the flip side, sugar lips

**Author's Note:**

> this is almost 5k of pure self-indulgent nonsense that I still couldn't manage to keep from getting sad
> 
> written for the discord jam prompt: "dream"

“I still don't understand the point of this endeavor,” Harrowhark said, poorly concealing her discomfort with frustration. 

“I do not like it either, Reverend Daughter,” Crux wheezed beside her. He was carrying a bag in complement to the one slung over her shoulder, neither very large, both containing everything she had thought it necessary to bring. She had secreted away a couple well-loved books as an indulgence, and even still, she had much less luggage than most of the other new arrivals.

“Your holy mother and father,” Crux continued, “blessed be their wisdom and guidance, thought it beneficial for you to gain some wider experience of the world before inheriting control of the Ninth.” The scowl on Crux’s face said how little he thought of the idea, perhaps even less than Harrow herself. “Koniortos University is one of the premier educational facilities in the Empire. And the student population is...diverse.”

This last word he hissed as though it were a shameful secret. He looked critically on the students milling through the courtyard, wearing all varieties of House colors and—to Harrow’s eye, used to hooded robes and little else—all manner of dress. She’d seen more skin in the last fifteen minutes than she had in all seventeen years of her life. They seemed as good as naked to her, but it was Harrow, clad in aforementioned hooded robe and face concealed beneath sacramental paint, who felt herself growing hot with embarrassment. More than a few individuals stared with open amazement as she passed.

“I don’t see what I’m going to learn surrounded by a bunch of—of licentious, intoxicated degenerates.” Harrow didn’t know much about what one did at university, but the little she did know did not seem conducive to any kind of education.

“Nor I, Lady,” Crux said. “But the Ninth endures. Focus on your studies and we will have you home again soon.”

“Aiglamene said I ought to ‘get to know someone my own age, for a change,’” Harrow said haltingly, the idea utterly foreign and somewhat repellent. And yet, she kept circling back to it in her mind, as though it were the twisted wreck of a skeleton fallen from the highest tier of Dreadburh and if only she looked long enough she could see how to make it whole again. There had never been anyone her age in the House of the Ninth as long as she’d been alive.

“You may not have much of a choice.” Crux’s lip curled as they approached what seemed to be the welcoming committee. A booth was set up outside the admissions building with a hand-painted banner that read “WELCOME FRESHMEN!!”, staffed by older students with volunteer stickers slapped on their chests.

Harrow hovered outside the gathering crowd of students. The thought of wading into that press of bodies made her feel small and unsteady, and her hand tightened around the strap of her bag. One of the volunteers, a wiry woman with a neat, dark braid, caught Harrow’s gaze by pure chance and her eyes narrowed. Something about her bearing put Harrow more in mind of a duel than a warm welcome. But before she could engage, a hand touched the woman’s broad shoulder. Someone was speaking to her. Harrow saw the woman’s mouth pull tight with uncertainty, then she nodded, casting one final look at Harrow before washing her hands of it.

Before Harrow could question what all that had been about, another woman emerged from the horde. Her thin arms were threaded through a pair of crutches and she had the washed out quality of an aged photograph, from her head of dusty brown ringlets to her pale skin broken by branching blue veins. Despite all this, her face was lit by a brilliant white smile that made her seem more vital and real than Harrow felt at the moment.

Before she fully extricated herself from the crowd of students, the woman shouted, “Ninth!” Several heads turned to stare in confusion or surprise. The woman paid them no mind. Harrow wished desperately for a shadowy grave niche to disappear into.

“It is the Ninth, isn’t it?” she asked, closing the distance. As if there could be any mistaking them. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus?”

“You seem to have the advantage of me,” Harrow said, in tones that implied anyone who had any kind of advantage over her was not long for this world.

The woman laughed, a bright and easy sound. “Apologies. Dulcinea Septimus.” She extended one hand, which Harrow shook only after a long, painful hesitation when it became clear Dulcinea wouldn’t back down. “You look so very cross. I’m sorry if I startled you. It’s only that we haven’t had anyone from the Ninth attend KU in God knows how long, let alone the _Reverend Daughter_.”

“ _Duchess_ Dulcinea Septimus?” Crux said darkly. 

That made Harrow reassess on the fly: this frail-looking creature was the necromantic heir of the Seventh House. And she apparently thought volunteering to herd clueless children was a valuable use of her free time. 

Dulcinea flapped her hand. “Guilty as charged, but please do call me Dulcie. Everyone does.” Her smile was ferocious and implacable. “I’m here to show you to your room. Your retainer can make sure your paperwork is all squared away, I’m sure.”

“My lady—” Crux started, but Dulcinea cut him off. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to take good care of her. Admissions is just that way.” She jerked her head back in the direction she’d come and, without further preamble, linked one of her arms with Harrow’s and started to lead her away.

“Lady Harrowhark,” Crux said again.

“It’s all right, marshal,” Harrow said with as much gravity as she could muster. She didn’t want to cause any more of scene than they already had. Perhaps she simply didn’t know how things worked here, outside the safe routine of Drearburh. Ignoring Crux’s scowl, Harrow let herself be led.

Once they were a little distance away, Dulcie jostled Harrow’s shoulder companionably and Harrow had to fight not to recoil. “There, now I have saved you from both Judith and your terribly grave escort. I am your knight in shining armor.”

“Judith?” Harrow repeated, somewhat dimly. She did not feel as though she were being saved.

“Oh, the girl that glared at you on the way in. Don’t take it personally; she glares at everybody. She takes everything so very seriously.” Dulcie, of all things, fluttered her eyelashes in Harrow’s direction. “I’m much more fun, don’t you think?”

Fun was not the word Harrow would have used. 

She became acutely aware of the heavy fall of Dulcie’s crutches as they crossed the courtyard and flushed under her paint. “Lady Septimus—”

“Dulcie,” the other woman insisted.

“Dulcie,” Harrow conceded after a pause, the name sitting in her mouth like expired nutrient paste. “I’m certain I can find my own way to my room. I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Dulcie shook her head and laughed again. “It’s the crutches, isn’t it? Don’t you worry, Harrowhark—may I call you Harrowhark?—your building is quite close to the center of campus. Very convenient for the both of us. I’m also your RA.”

Dulcie seemed to sense the way Harrowhark paled, as though she’d felt the blood leave her skin. “Don’t look so grim! I remember a bit of what it’s like to join society after being sequestered away for so long. I know it’s overwhelming, but you’ll get used to it. I’ve been here six years now and it feels more like home than the Seventh ever did.”

“Six years?” Harrow cursed herself for her dumbstruck repetition, but she wanted to be sure she heard Dulcie right. Was she expected to be away for six years? Longer?

“Oh, yes. I’m a ‘super senior.’” This apparently struck her as terribly funny. “I started late, you see. Fought for ages to be able to come. And now that I’m here, they’ll have to send me home in a box.”

This seemed a wildly intimate thing to say to someone she had just met, and Dulcie had said it with the same gravitas she might have used explaining what would be served for dinner. Harrow wanted to turn, march back to the courtyard, and find Crux just for the relief of a conversation whose ebb and flow she could predict.

But Dulcie was leading her up to the front of a building. She knocked a button with her elbow and the glass-fronted double doors swung outward, admitting them into a high-ceilinged lobby with a few scattered couches and a single tall desk set into one corner. A narrow, bespectacled boy sat behind the desk and his face lit up when he saw Dulcie. Harrow trailed after her kidnapper helplessly.

“Pal!” Dulcie cried. “I hoped it would be you. May I introduce to you, the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus of the Ninth House.”

“Harrow,” Harrow found herself saying, almost against her will. Her full name and title sounded dreadful in the face of “Dulcie” and “Pal”.

Pal’s shockingly gray eyes sharpened with interest. “Palamedes. Pleasure to meet you. Dulcie’s been going on and on about the black vestal that was going to be living on her floor.” In a mock conspiratorial whisper, he continued, “If she corners you about poetry, just shout. Cam’s across the hall from you and she knows all Dulcie’s weaknesses.”

“Not fair. The Ninth must have incredible poetry.” At that, Harrow shuddered. “All dark and moody and morbid.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Palamedes said. “Speaking of cornering you, Ninth. When you’ve a moment, I’d love to talk constructs. The skeleton servitors on the Sixth are badly in need of an overhaul, and I imagine you’d have some insight—”

“Nope!” Dulcie ducked in between them, interrupting the most normal conversation Harrow had heard all day. “You can talk shop later, Pal. Let a girl get settled in.”

Palamedes inclined his head, smiling. “As you wish, Lady Septimus. Reverend Daughter, do think about it.”

Before she could respond, Dulcie bullied her into an elevator, waving at Palamedes as the doors closed. Dulcie shook her head goodnaturedly, some of her fawn-colored curls falling into her face. 

“He won’t stop once you get him started. Beware the Sixth House,” she proclaimed with mock severity.

Sliding into the familiar topic with no small amount of relief, Harrow said: “I would certainly be able to refine whatever process the Sixth uses for their servitors. It’s really just a matter of tying the theorems down at the right junctures and then they require very little maintenance. I’ll bet they use _pins_ ,” she added with a touch of a sneer.

“In the Emperor’s name, you’re just as bad,” Dulcie said, looking absolutely delighted.

The elevator spit them out in the middle of a long hallway, lined on both sides with numbered doors. Some of these doors were open and the sounds of conversation and laughter and what Harrow could only assume to be music drifted out to mix discordantly as they passed. She tried not to look into any of the rooms, but she still caught more unwilling glimpses of the details of these strangers’ lives than she cared to. 

Finally, Dulcie came to a halt. “This one’s you,” she said. “My room’s down by the elevators and you’re always welcome to stop by. If you need—”

Dulcie trailed off, eyes lingering on the door they’d stopped in front of. Harrow tried to see what was so interesting about it. The only thing that set it apart from the rest was a small square of white plex hung on it, upon which someone had used a black marker to draw a poor anatomical representation of a skull wearing, of all things, a pair of sunglasses. Harrow assumed it was some kind of joke about her being Ninth that she wasn’t equipped to understand.

“Oh dear,” Dulcie said, a sly smile spreading across her face. “I think you’re going to have a very interesting year, Harrow. Honestly, I’m a bit jealous.”

Before Harrow could ask what she meant, Dulcie reached past her, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. “I’ll come back with your key in a bit, give you a little time to settle in.”

But Harrowhark was frozen in the doorway, cold dread trickling into her gut. 

“I requested a single,” she choked out.

Dulcie laughed. “You and every other freshman ever. Sorry, dear, that isn’t how it happens.”

There was a strange spike of pain behind her eye, there and gone again. When she turned, Dulcie was already retreating back down the hallway, sometimes calling a greeting through an open door. Harrow had no choice but to go inside, take stock, and start to formulate a strategy.

The room contained two beds, two dressers, and two desks, everything neatly divided along the walls to give the occupants equal space. And whoever fate had seen fit to inflict upon her had already moved in. There was a pair of heavy boots kicked half under the left hand bed, a sheathed rapier laid carefully on the desk, and a number of frankly vulgar pictures tacked on the wall that looked as though they’d been torn out of a magazine. What little she gleaned from these artifacts did not fill Harrowhark with hope.

She didn’t have much time to brood on it. Almost as soon as she dumped her bag on the remaining bed, the door opened behind her. Harrow whirled around, and the girl standing in the doorway flinched away from her. Easily startled by the sight of a skull-painted Locked Tomb nun, apparently. A sign of weakness Harrowhark cataloged for later. But then the intruder laughed. Harrow’s mouth went abruptly dry.

“You scared the shit out of me,” the girl said. “Nonagesimus, right?”

The girl took a few easy steps into the room, dragging Harrow’s gaze like a fish on a line. She was tall and broad, her bare arms corded with lean muscle. She seemed to light up the room somehow, bright where Harrow was dark—her short cropped hair a brilliant red, her eyes a curious polished gold. Harrow’s heart beat painfully fast in her chest for a reason she couldn’t quite identify. 

Suddenly, the girl was right in front of her. “Hey, don’t worry,” she said, face breaking into an easy grin. She proffered her hand. “I don’t bite. I guess we’re roomies. I’m—”

There was a fierce knock on the door that made Harrow and her supposed roommate jump and turn in unison. Before either of them could move to open it, the door swung inward, revealing a harried-looking older woman.

“Professor Pent?” her roommate said, brow furrowing.

Pent’s attention slid past the other girl with an odd pinched look to her eyes and mouth, almost like regret. She crossed the room to Harrow. 

“Thank God,” she said, a bit out of breath. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. This set’s a lot bigger than the others.”

“Excuse me?” Harrow said faintly.

Pent sighed. She laid one hand on Harrow’s cheek, heedless of the facepaint, and Harrow froze like a prey animal willing the predator to pass her by.

“Harrowhark,” Pent said. “This isn’t how it happens.”

——

Harrowhark Nonagesimus was ten years old, and she was alone.

She was often alone. She was the only child in the entirety of the Ninth House and always had been. Even surrounded at all times by tottering nuns and silent penitents, ever under the watchful eyes of her parents and the weight of their expectations, flanked by bristling skeletal constructs forged from the paranoia lodged deep in her own heart, Harrow was still always, always alone.

But now more so than ever. Because Harrowhark Nonagesimus had done the impossible. Had broken the one sacred rule of her House. She had rolled away the rock. Unlocked the Locked Tomb. Pressed her way through the lethal wards and deep into the dark, terrible heart of the Ninth. 

No one had been here in ten thousand years. The damp stone walls rang with loneliness. For the first time Harrow could remember, she breathed long and deep and did not feel like screaming her throat bloody, screaming until someone really looked at her. The empty places inside of her were filling with a slow trickle of pride.

Her fingertips were bloodied from scratching equations into the stone. Her skin felt raw from the touch of the wards before she had turned them aside, asserting her right as the latest and strongest of the line of Tombkeepers. She was cold down into her very bones. But she stood as tall and straight and severe as a ten-year-old girl could manage. Her teeth chattered, which took away from her dignified pose somewhat.

She stood on the broken, rocky shore of the lake hidden in the depths of the Ninth and could just make out the shadow of the Tomb itself in the dim phosphorescence of the undead worms squirming over the cavern ceiling. Now that she was here, nothing would keep her away. 

Harrow knew how to swim in much the same way she knew how to jump from a high place. It was easy to get started, but she had no idea what to do on the way down except hope for the best. She shucked off her billowing hand-me-down robe, but elected to keep her boots on. The stones beneath her feet were sharp. Then she waded out up to her waist in frigid salt water, took a breath, and dove in.

In retrospect, keeping her boots was probably a mistake. Her sodden clothes dragged her down and she didn’t have much in the way of athletic stamina, being ten and a necromancer. But if nothing else, Harrowhark was tremendously stubborn and she managed to thrash and flail her way toward the central island before her arms went totally numb. 

She crawled up onto the opposite shore, spluttering, facepaint running, and felt an insistent tug behind her ribs. Whatever was in the Locked Tomb was calling to her. It belonged to her, she to it, forever and forever. Wasn’t it the whole reason she’d been born? Her body hallowed by two hundred innocent souls, suited only to be mistress to a monster from the first moment she drew breath. She would look upon that which dwelt within the Tomb and if it killed her for her sacrilege, that was only just. 

She crossed the threshold of the mausoleum. She didn’t have it in her to be afraid or awestruck. She just had to see. She had to know if it was worth it.

Always and eternally small for her age, Harrow had to stand on tiptoes to peer over the edge of the coffin. She braced her thin shaking hands against the frosted stone—she hardly felt the cold now—and leaned in to look the Emperor’s death in the face.

The body did not look how Harrowhark expected it to look. 

It was the body of a girl, older than she was. Warm brown skin, broad shoulders, a shock of orange hair pasted down by the damp. Her large, strong hands were clasped around the hilt of a two-handed sword which rested on her chest. She did not have the empty, sagging look of the other corpses Harrow had seen. Instead, she looked ready to heft the sword and cleave the coffin in two.

She was beautiful.

Harrow pressed a palm flat to the transparent lid of the coffin and leaned in close. Her breath fogged the glass a little. She felt her heart stumble as she tried to commit the body’s face to memory.

Below her, inches from her own face, the body opened its luminous golden eyes.

Harrow was too frightened even to flinch. She could only watch, petrified, a scream crawling up her throat, as the body’s eyes found hers and its mouth soundlessly shaped the first syllable of her name—

“Harrowhark?”

She did scream then. She also staggered backwards away from the coffin and fell on her ass, gouging one hand badly on a broken chunk of masonry. The voice had come from behind her. She scrambled to face the entrance to the Tomb, leaving bloody handprints on the floor.

There was a man standing there. Her father’s age, perhaps. It was a man she did not recognize and who should certainly not be standing in the Locked Tomb of the Ninth House and he was looking at her with a terrible softness no one had ever inflicted upon her before. 

The man rubbed his hands over his arms and cast an unsettled eye over their surrounding. “I’ll never understand Ninth sensibilities,” he said. He half-turned over one shoulder and called out, “She’s in here. I’ve got her.”

“What—Who—” Harrow said, in a high, imperious voice that almost hid the trembling. “How did you get in here?”

The man crossed the floor and crouched in front of her. Harrow flinched away from the movement, trying to crawl away and running up against the ice-cold wall of the Tomb. The man’s mouth twisted with unhappiness. He very slowly reached out and took Harrow’s bleeding hand in his.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His hands were very gentle. Harrowhark started to shake. “This isn’t how it happens.”

—— 

The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the beautifully decayed windows, striping Canaan House’s main atrium in green and gold. Harrow’s eyes, still unused to the unshadowed brilliance of Dominicus, were also streaming. She refused to wipe her face.

“Are the accommodations unsuitable, Reverend Daughter?” Teacher asked, wringing his hands together. 

“They are entirely unsuitable. If you did not have the space to comfortably house sixteen people, you ought to have only invited the heirs and been done with it.”

Teacher gave her a strange, distant smile. “I’m afraid that isn’t how this works. A Lyctor needs her cavalier.”

Harrow shook her head in muted disgust. She had slipped away from her cavalier as soon as possible. Mostly for her sake; Harrow knew how badly she wanted to shake off any vestige of the Ninth House, Harrowhark included. Harrowhark especially. That much she could grant, particularly if it kept her out of Harrow’s way.

“I demand some alternative be found,” Harrow said.

Teacher was already shaking his head. “You have seen how this holy place has fallen into disrepair. There was only so much we could do to prepare for your arrival. We have so little space.” And then, a killing blow. “Surely the bed is big enough for the both of you?”

Harrow felt the flush ooze up her neck like a lava flow and only the face paint saved her from further embarrassment. “I do not know what relationship you _presume_ —”

“Oh good, you’re here,” came a voice from behind her. “At first I thought we were back on track, but you’re dreadfully stubborn.”

Harrow turned to see the Fifth House approaching. She grit her teeth against wondering how much they had heard. Certainly the issue of beds or lack thereof was nothing to _them._

“Lady Pent, Magnus the Fifth, excuse me. I was discussing something with Teacher.” _Privately,_ she hoped to imply with the arch of her eyebrows. 

“I’m quite sure you were, but we don’t have time for this,” Lady Pent said.

“I don’t think we’d want to see this one play out anyway,” Magnus Quinn said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Seems a bit personal.”

“As riveting as this conversation is, I think I’ll be going,” Harrowhark said. She didn’t understand what the Fifth were going on about, but there was a faint buzz of unease at the back of her skull all the same.

When she tried to brush past them, Magnus caught her wrist in one large hand. “Reverend Daughter—”

“Unhand me,” Harrow said, jerking away. She took a step back. She found herself wishing, foolishly, for her cavalier.

“This isn’t how it happens,” Magnus said.

—— 

It was dark. Harrowhark couldn’t make out her surroundings at all, save for a faint strip of light coming in under a nearby door. There was a general sense of being in a very small room—a closet?—but for a dizzying moment, she couldn’t remember how she had gotten there. 

She staggered a little, reached out to steady herself, and became abruptly aware of the fact that there was someone else in here with her.

“Nonagesimus?” a familiar voice asked. There was a steadying hand on her upper arm and she reflexively flinched away, knocking into the metal shelf behind her. It must be a closet. There was simply no room. She could feel the heat of the other body against her skin.

There was a low huff of laughter. “Are you hiding, too? I didn’t think anything could spook Princess of the Night Harrowhark Nonagesimus.”

“I’m _not_ hiding,” she insisted. 

She was hiding. She remembered now. She’d seen Ianthe Tridentarius come out of her sixth period class at the end of the hall and knew she would try to corner her about her Osseomancy homework. Harrow simply did not have the mental fortitude to deal with her today. So she had made a strategic decision and...ducked into a supply closet.

“Sure, sure. This is just where you come to center yourself, commune with your dark magicks. That’s what necromancers do to relax, right?”

Harrow bristled. She bundled herself into the farthest corner of the closet, trying to put as much distance between her and the other girl as possible. “You don’t know anything about my dark magicks.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Why are you hiding, then, Nav?” The name felt thick and bitter on her tongue, like she’d dredged it up out of a black swamp. “I can’t imagine what would have driven the cavalier track's rising star into the closet.”

“I haven’t been in the closet since primary school,” Nav said, and Harrow could hear her self-satisfied smile. “I’m ditching fencing practice. Tern’s coming to give a ‘professional demonstration,’ which is grade A bullshit because he sucks, but if Camilla catches me skipping she’ll kick my ass.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d admit to being less capable than Camilla Hect.”

Nav shifted in the dark. Harrow’s eyes were starting to adjust and she could just barely make out the shape of the other girl. Her sheer meathead bulk took up most of the room. Harrow felt small and crowded and hot.

“Maybe not in a fair one-on-one, but Cam’s a damn sight meaner than I am. I swear she could put me on the floor with just a look.”

“Your natural habitat,” Harrow sniped back thoughtlessly. She was staring hard at Nav’s silhouette. She realized distantly that she couldn’t remember her first name. That didn’t make any sense. She’d known Nav for years and years. She’d been a thorn in Harrow’s side ever since she was moved up a grade and Nav saw fit to try and attach herself to Harrow like a very large, very persistent leech. And yet in the place Nav’s name should be, there was only a disconcerting emptiness, like someone had reached in and scooped the knowledge out. Why couldn’t she _remember?_

“What, the floor?” Harrow could still hear that damned smile in Nav’s voice.

“Beneath me,” she clarified. 

Nav leaned in. Harrow knew this because she could suddenly feel the girl’s hot breath against her cheek. Harrow tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go.

“You’re welcome to try and get me beneath you any time you like, my dark lady.”

Harrow went very still. Her heart was thumping against her ribs and there was an electric feeling in her gut that was a bit like anger, and rather more like fear. In the dim light, she could see the faint reflection of Nav’s eyes, caught the way her eyebrows drew together.

“Hey, I was only kidding, Nonagesimus, I wouldn’t—” Nav started to retreat.

Harrowhark completely took leave of her senses, then. She fisted her hands in Nav’s jersey, pulled her back in, and crushed their mouths together like she was trying to punch Nav with her lips.

Nav froze for a second while her tiny jock brain rebooted. But then the other girl’s hands settled on Harrow’s waist, her lips parted under Harrow’s assault, and Harrow tried to stop thinking after that. Nav let herself be crowded against the wall, yielding wherever Harrow pushed, and why had it taken them both so _bloody long?_

There was a wild, frantic feeling growing in Harrowhark’s chest that she didn’t understand. She felt like she was trying to cup water in her hands only for it to trickle away. Nav felt warm and alive and real under her hands but she couldn’t remember her name and something was very wrong, and if only Harrow could figure out what that was then maybe she could fix it, she knew she could fix it, but she didn’t want to let go, if she let go it would be too late—

The door to the closet opened and light spilled in like a bomb going off. The fluorescents illuminated the backs of Harrow’s eyelids, which she kept very deliberately closed. She and Nav stilled, broke apart, but Harrow was still clinging to Nav’s shirt and refused to let her go. 

“Harrow?” Nav said.

A tear escaped down Harrow’s cheek. “Gideon,” she breathed.

“Harrowhark,” said the voice of Abigail Pent from the open door. She sounded dreadfully soft and sad. “I’m sorry. I’m so wretchedly sorry, but we can’t do this. We need your help. This—”

“This isn’t how it happens,” Harrow choked.

——

When Harrowhark finally, truly awoke she was in her bed at Canaan House and she burned with more than the memory of Gideon’s name on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> you can come say hi on tumblr [here!](https://corpsesoldier.tumblr.com)


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